


Good boy (Clean)

by DangerRollins



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 04:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangerRollins/pseuds/DangerRollins
Summary: Good behavior, good grades, an all around good person. He'd always been a good boy, really! Rick had always been proud to call him his son. He was polite, respectful, generous, brave, hardworking, honest and quite frankly, perfect, in Rick's eyes at least.Until he wasnt.(Clean version of 'Good boy')





	Good boy (Clean)

Carl was a good boy.

He'd always been a good boy, really! Rick had always been proud to call him his son. He was polite, respectful, generous, brave, hardworking, honest and quite frankly, perfect, in Rick's eyes at least. The boy was smart too. Kept all A's and B's in school and threw a fit when he had anything less than, although Rick had never been too hard on him about his grades.

He'd been a pretty normal child, until one day he wasn't. It was the worst day of their lives and would probably forever hold that title. Rick had been at work, dealing with the usual bullshit that he had to deal with as a cop when he got the call from his son. His heart had started pounding immediately and he began to panic because he knew something was wrong the moment he saw the number. He'd made Carl and Lori both promise not to call him at work unless it was an absolute emergency because they were both quick to give him a ring anytime they wanted to talk about how their day had gone or what project they'd done at school or what the Kardashians were up to--He loved them. So much. But he couldn't have them calling him every five minutes while he was trying to deal with actual issues.

They'd promised him they wouldn't call unless it was an emergency, and for five months, they hadn't called him. So, before he could even pick up the phone good, tears were welling up in his eyes, his hands shaking and his lips already turning red as he chewed on them to keep from screaming down the phone and asking if everything was okay before anyone could say anything. He hoped that they'd just forgotten the rule, he hoped that he was going to hang up the phone with a large smile on his face, feeling stupid for panicking over nothing, feeling relieved that it was only Carl calling because he just couldn't wait to tell him about something really cool that happened at school that day, or Lori calling to tell him that she missed him and wanted him home.

When he got the courage to answer the phone, all hope was gone.

 

"I killed her."

It was the second thing he heard after he answered, the first thing being broken sobs coming from his son.

Rick tilted his head, his eyebrows rising in shock and his eyes fluttering closed every few seconds as he tried to will away the tears threatening to spill. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to find something, anything, to say, but he couldn't. His twelve-year-old son was screaming, crying, sobbing over the phone and he'd just admitted to killing somebody and what was he supposed to say? It's okay? It's not okay. Who did you kill? Why make the boy say it? He already knew.

"Carl." He said carefully after a few moments.

 

"She just lost it, dad, and I did too." The boy choked out.

 

Rick nodded slowly although he knew Carl couldn't actually see him.

 

Lori had been a good mother, most times. She was kind and sweet and gentle and she loved Carl so much. She'd been a decent wife. She and Rick admittedly had their fair share of problems--And more. But they were trying. Trying to make it work, trying to love each other like they had before. Because they had an angel of a son who needed both of his parents and he saved both of them every day just by existing, therefore, they owed everything to him and if that meant staying together despite the fact that they'd fallen out of love years ago, well, so be it.

 

Lori was good. She was. Until she wasn't.

 

She had lost her mother one year and her father the next. Her sister and brother had seemingly forgotten that she existed. She'd been sexually harassed by Rick's coworker shortly after the loss of her father and despite the fact that the man had been beaten to a pulp and run out of town by Rick, she'd never fully recovered from the traumatic experience. And there was so much more. And it just kept building and building and building up until she just couldn't take it anymore.

 

She hadn't been the same Lori they'd come to know and love for a long time. She was nothing like the way she used to be. Her behavior was strange and she...They knew a long time ago that they needed to get her help. They saw the signs, and there were many of them, but they just didn't want to acknowledge the fact that something was very wrong. She wasn't thinking right, she wasn't in her right mind, and maybe if they had talked to her about it and got into her head just a little bit, they would've known that things were far worse than they'd imagined. But they hadn't talked to her so they didn't know.

 

"Son..." Rick whispered into the phone as he stood slowly. "W-What happened?"

 

"She got me from school, she was being weird. Then we got home." He cried. "She pulled out a gun."

 

Rick's heart dropped as he blindly searched around for his keys, knocking his coffee over in the process, not that he cared. He knew that Carl was okay, physically at least, because he was speaking to him right now, but the thought of her pulling a gun on the young boy--

 

"I talked to her. I talked to her for a bit and I got close and she tried to shoot me and I took the gun. I couldn't get her to calm down and I knew I couldn't fight her off again, she was too strong. I shot her. I didn't know what else to do. I shot her. It was either that or...It would've been her calling you...I shot her."

 

Rick had made his way outside by now, not explaining anything to anyone, but they knew something must've been wrong so they didn't question why he was leaving the station well before it was time for his shift to end. He was shaken up as it was, but he was starting to feel like he was going to explode from all the pressure he was feeling in his chest--And it wasn't because his wife was gone, because a woman he'd known for half his life was gone, because his son had shot her. It wasn't any of that. It was that Carl had quit crying and now he sounded calm like they were having a normal conversation, a stern tone in his voice that reeked of determination to just move on already, and it was that he was feeling so much fucking relief because it hadn't been the other way around. It hadn't been Lori calling him to tell him the tragic news, it was Carl. His boy was still with him. Nothing could stop him from feeling happy about that.

 

He felt light. He felt sick. He was sick. How could he feel like this? How could he feel so relieved --Happy, even--at a time like this? He was supposed to be so much more upset than he was. He was supposed to be broken, he was supposed to be a mess because of the mass amount of heartbreak he was supposed to be suffering from. He wasn't.

 

"D-Don't feel guilty, Carl." He muttered.

 

"I don't."

 

It should've alarmed him. It should've made him feel at least a little suspicious. It should've made the wheels in his head turn. It should've been a signal for him to give his son a good, long talk. It wasn't.

 

"Good."

 

More relief.

 

"I did what I had to do. It's going to be hard, dad, but we'll get through it. It's all okay."

 

And that's why Rick was okay. Carl had said that it was all okay so, it was.

 

 

Rick had been worried that it would change Carl forever. That he'd shut down, become indifferent and distant, or maybe he'd turn into a complete brat and he'd give Rick a harder time than most parents got, or maybe he'd turn to violence to solve all his problems, or maybe even drugs or alcohol. He worried that he'd think that killing was okay--A necessity even. He worried that Carl took it too well, got over it too easily, or maybe he hadn't gotten over it at all. Maybe he was hiding his real feelings all along. That was the thing with Carl, you could never tell.

 

To Rick's surprise and relief, Carl seemed to be pretty okay.

 

Good behavior, good grades, an all around good person. He'd always been a good boy, really! Rick had always been proud to call him his son. He was polite, respectful, generous, brave, hardworking, honest and quite frankly, perfect, in Rick's eyes at least.

 

Until he wasn't.


End file.
